Gov. Kay Ivey called for the creation of a voucher-type program for Alabama public school students and a variety of programs on education and health in her annual State of the State address on Tuesday.

The governor also called for high starting salaries for teachers and a pilot program to deliver care to pregnant women in the state.

The voucher-type program, called the CHOOSE Act, was the climax of a speech that touched on several big issues in the state – particularly prisons and low workforce participation – without providing specific details on addressing them.

The CHOOSE Act, filed by Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, earlier on Tuesday, would create a schedule of tax credits for parents to use. For the first two years, it would offer a tax credit of up to $7,000 for households making up to 300% of the poverty level – about $75,000 a year for a family of three – to use toward private school tuition. The income cap would be lifted in the third year of the program. 

“As additional families choose to participate in the program, and as our revenue increases, we can grow the program responsibly so that it can be fully universal for every Alabama family who wishes to participate,” Ivey said.

She said the goal would be to put the state “on a trajectory to make our program fully universal.”

Ivey also called for teacher raises, calling for Alabama to have the highest starting salary for teachers among neighboring states, and called for it to be done in this session.

“At the end of the day, I believe the CHOOSE Act — packaged with providing our K-12 teachers the highest starting salaries — will help our public schools become even stronger,” she said.

Finance Director Bill Poole earlier Tuesday said Governor Kay Ivey’s proposed General Fund budget would amount to about $3.3 billion, an 8.16% rise from the current year, with an ETF proposal of $9.3 billion, marking a 6.25% increase.

Poole said the governor would emphasize education savings accounts, targeted K-12 funding, and additional allocations for specific education-related initiatives within the proposed budgets.

Alabama lawmakers were briefed by finance officials Tuesday morning regarding the condition of the state’s two budgets, in which they called for caution in the foreseeable future.

Kirk Fulford, the director of the Fiscal Division of the Alabama Legislative Services Agency, projected appropriations for the Education Trust Fund budget (ETF), responsible for K-12 education, will grow from approximately $8.8 billion to $9.3 billion for the fiscal year 2025. Similarly, appropriations for the General Fund, funding non-educational aspects, were estimated to increase from $3 billion to $3.36 billion in 2025.

Fulford highlighted the unprecedented growth in education revenue in recent years, fueled primarily by substantial federal pandemic relief funds. Poole echoed Fulford’s presentation regarding the unsustainable nature of the rapid growth in education budget in recent years.

House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, was concerned with what would be the threshold for the families in need. He said he imagines the threshold to be a family yearly income of $75,000, which is not something he could get behind.

“I think that using the term ‘low-income,’ I don’t necessarily know that that threshold fits that description of what low income means” Daniels said.

He feels that Alabama needs to look at and repair its current education system, instead of building a new one, which he called uncertain and “with no proven track record.”

“We have public charters. We have AAA. We have public schools,” he said. “How many more options do you need?”

Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, expressed concerns about private schools’ lack of accountability and proposed stricter certification requirements for teachers, and said that public schools are what’s best for children.

“Families that are most in need, most likely, if there’s no transportation, they can’t get to the next county or the next best school if it’s not within their area. That says a whole lot but it says nothing to me,” he said.

Gambling

Ivey Tuesday reiterated her long-held position that Alabamians should vote on gaming.

“This year when Alabamians make their way to the ballot box, I hope they will be voting on another issue: gaming,” she said.

Two House Republicans – Reps. Andy Whitt of Harvest and Chris Blacksher of Smiths Station – are developing gambling legislation that they said could have lottery, casino and enforcement provisions, though the details have not been made public.

Any legalized gambling in Alabama requires a constitutional amendment that would be submitted to voters for approval. If the Legislature approves a gambling bill, it will go straight to the ballot. The governor does not have a role in the process.

Ivey said she would be “carefully watching” the legislation as it moves through the Legislature.”

Daniels said they are in a good place, but he couldn’t say for certain where they are in the negotiations since there are lawmakers still opposed to it.

“We’re still working out the details,” he said.

Prisons

Gov. Ivey said the Alabama Department of Corrections “remains a key focus in our state’s public safety efforts.”

She said they are moving forward with building two new state prison facilities. Last year, the price for one prison topped $1 billion, taking up almost all the funding allocated by the Legislature for two new men’s prisons in 2021.

”We are moving forward in our mission to build two new facilities,” she said, though she did not share details.

Ivey also praised ADOC Commissioner John Hamm, saying there was “no one more capable to lead” efforts to improve state prisons.

The state’s prisons have faced overcrowding and violence for decades. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Alabama following two reports on physical and sexual assaults within men’s correctional facilities.

According to Alabama Appleseed, 325 people died in the state’s prisons last year.

Health care

In her speech, Ivey suggested that the Alabama School of Healthcare Sciences, which she proposed for Demopolis as its location, could be a solution to health care concerns, especially in rural Alabama.

“This school will directly expose young men and women from around Alabama, and particularly rural students, to various healthcare fields, and it gives them options,” she said.

Ivey also said she launching a  pilot program to provide pregnant people with checkups at nine county health departments that she said was in areas of need, crediting Alabama being a “pro-life state.”

“I am more committed than ever to protect the sanctity of life, and as I said on this occasion last year, our work is not done” she said.

Alabama has some of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the South.

Economic development

In her speech, Ivey also said her administration is committed to reforming the state’s workforce development sector but didn’t provide specifics.

“When it comes to workforce developments, there are two customers: jobseekers and employers,” she said.

She said Alabama must raise the workforce participation rate, which is below the national average, at 57%. She said that Alabama can’t reach “its full potential with nearly half of its population on the sidelines.”

Alabama’s workforce participation rate has trailed the nation’s since 1976. Experts say a lack of access to child care and transportation play a role.

Singleton, who credited Alabama’s economy and low unemployment rate to President Joe Biden, said that having a job is different from having a job with a livable wage. He said that, especially in rural Alabama, people have to travel to work, some over an hour. He said the state needs to create jobs in rural areas so that people don’t have to travel over an hour to work.

“We must develop jobs in our rural areas so that people don’t have to travel so far to be able to make it to work, so they’ve got dollar that they are making to equal to something that means something to them,” Singleton said.